What is a good TACoS for a new Amazon product?

For a new Amazon product in its first 60 to 90 days, a TACoS of 15% to 25% is generally acceptable. This reflects the reality that a new listing has little or no organic ranking, meaning almost all of its revenue comes through paid advertising. The higher ad spend is an investment in sales velocity and ranking signals. As the listing accumulates reviews and ranking history, the organic proportion of total revenue should grow and TACoS should fall toward a more sustainable 8% to 12% range.

Is a lower TACoS always better on Amazon?

Not always. An unusually low TACoS can indicate underinvestment in advertising. If your TACoS is 2% but your total revenue is flat or declining, you may be under-spending on ads and missing sales opportunities. A low TACoS is most positive when it accompanies strong and growing total revenue, signalling that organic sales are carrying the listing. If TACoS is low because you have cut ad spend significantly and total revenue has fallen proportionally, it is not a signal of efficiency.

How often should I check my Amazon TACoS?

TACoS should be reviewed weekly as part of your regular PPC reporting, with a more detailed analysis monthly. Weekly checks catch sudden spikes that may indicate budget problems or new competition. Monthly analysis gives you enough data to identify genuine trends in the organic versus paid revenue split. The most useful view is a rolling 30-day TACoS compared to the previous 30-day period, which smooths out day-to-day volatility and reveals the underlying direction of travel.

What is a good TACoS on Amazon?

TACoS, or Total Advertising Cost of Sales, measures your ad spend as a percentage of your total revenue, including both organic and PPC-attributed sales. Unlike ACoS, which only measures advertising efficiency against ad-generated revenue, TACoS tells you what advertising actually costs as a proportion of your entire business on that listing. A low TACoS signals that your listing is generating significant organic revenue relative to your ad spend. A high TACoS signals that most of your sales are coming from paid traffic, which is expensive and fragile. What counts as a good TACoS varies by product margin, business stage and category. The right TACoS target is not a single universal number. It shifts depending on where your listing is in its lifecycle. A newly launched product with no organic ranking history needs aggressive advertising to generate sales velocity, build reviews, and signal relevance to Amazon's algorithm. In this phase, spending heavily on ads relative to total revenue is strategic: a TACoS of 15% to 25% is common and acceptable. The investment is not just buying sales today; it is purchasing ranking position that will generate organic sales tomorrow. As a listing matures and accumulates ranking history, review count and organic traffic, the proportion of total revenue that comes from advertising should shrink even if the absolute amount of ad spend stays constant or grows. A listing generating 60% of its revenue from organic search and 40% from PPC will have a much lower TACoS than a listing generating 90% of its revenue from PPC alone. For an established listing in a moderately competitive category, a TACoS of 8% to 12% is a reasonable target. For a highly optimised listing with strong organic rankings, 5% to 8% is achievable. Below 5% typically indicates either very strong organic performance or underinvestment in advertising. The most important constraint on what constitutes a sustainable TACoS for your specific listing is your profit margin after all costs. If your net margin before advertising is 35%, and your TACoS reaches 35%, your advertising is consuming the entire profit on that listing. In practice, you need your TACoS to sit meaningfully below your net margin to leave room for actual profit. A useful rule of thumb is to target a TACoS that is no more than half your net margin: a 30% net margin product should target a TACoS of 15% or lower at maximum, and closer to 8% to 10% for a sustainable long-term position. This margin-based ceiling means that high-margin products have more TACoS headroom than low-margin products. A private label product with a 45% net margin can profitably sustain a higher TACoS than a reseller product operating on a 15% margin. Calculate your break-even TACoS the same way you would calculate break-even ACoS: it is simply your net margin percentage expressed as a decimal. Any TACoS at or above your break-even point means advertising is unprofitable at the total business level. Improving your TACoS is fundamentally about increasing the organic proportion of your total revenue. The levers for this are keyword ranking, listing quality, and review volume. Stronger organic rankings mean more organic sales, which dilutes the advertising spend across a larger revenue base. Better listing content, including a keyword-optimised title and bullet points, increases conversion rate for both organic and paid traffic, which improves your ACoS (which in turn reduces your TACoS). On the advertising side, reducing wasted spend on non-converting keywords and shifting budget toward high-performing search terms lowers your total ad spend for the same or greater ad-attributed revenue. Pausing underperforming campaigns, adding negative keywords to prevent irrelevant spend, and harvesting converting search terms from auto campaigns into manual campaigns are the standard TACoS improvement tactics. Use Keyword Hunters to identify the keywords your listing is not yet ranking for organically: these are the highest-value targets for your PPC campaigns, because winning organic ranking for them will directly reduce your TACoS.

A good Amazon TACoS typically falls between 5% and 15% depending on your margin and growth stage. Learn what TACoS target to aim for and why it matters.